This is the first session that realy hit the roof when it comes to the level of the session. I arrived late to the session (sorry). The session is about reliability on large system. The session was held by Pat Helland. Basiclly Pat presented the idea of ACID 2.0, ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability).

I was quite happy with going to this session. Pat presented an interesting way to look at fault-tollerant large-scale systems using definitions of discrete mathematics. This first concrete use of basic mathematical rules Ive seen used in industry, or since I finished my education.

Ill try to summarize the idea. The idea is to have your transacations (units of work if you wish), designed in a way so that order doesn’t matter. That way you can achieve consistency over time as the transactions arrive from failing parts of the system. Ofcourse each transaction should be idempotent and isolated aswell.

I know this is a very short summary and definitly doesn’t give the session nearly enough credit.